Battle of Pine's Bridge (1781), Death of Christopher Greene by David R. Wagner
In the early morning hours of May 14, 1781, a Loyalist military unit, De Lancey's Cowboys, surprised an American Patriot defensive position at the Davenport Inn, guarding the Pine's Bridge crossing of the Croton River. As the sole crossing over the river, the bridge served as a critical, strategic artery for communication and supply lines of the Patriot forces. It was guarded by the 1st Rhode Island Regiment (which had many Black American and some indigenous soldiers) along with detached soldiers of the Massachusetts Continental Line and the New Hampshire Continental Line on the north bank of the Croton River.
Colonel Christopher Greene, the regiment's commander, and Major Ebenezer Flagg, Greene's second-in-command, were killed in the action, along with at least six Black American soldiers of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment (two more later died of their wounds). The Black soldiers were reported to have "defended their beloved Col. Greene so well that it was only over their dead bodies that the enemy reached and murdered him." An account of the attack claimed that Greene's body "was found in the woods, about a mile distant from his tent, cut, and mangled in the most shocking way." This brutality is often attributed to the Loyalists' particular hatred of Greene for commanding an integrated unit which included many Black soldiers. There is an eyewitness account of the desire for revenge expressed by Captain Gilbert Totten, one of De Lancey's Cowboys, after he had been briefly detained near Pine's Bridge several weeks before the battle and placed under a guard of Black soldiers.